Why We Changed How Genia Charges — And What It Says About the Future of AI Software
We changed our pricing model. I want to explain why — not just as a changelog, but because the reasoning reflects something broader about what AI companies should actually be selling.
The short version: we moved away from subscriptions and free trials. We replaced them with a sample project for exploration and a pay-per-project model where the price reflects the complexity of what you’re asking us to deliver. We think this is the right model for Genia, and we think it’s the right model for AI in general. I’ll explain both.
What changed
Free trials are gone. In their place, every new user gets access to a sample project — a complete, real structural design that you can explore from start to finish. Basic info, load inputs, architectural model, structural layout, calculation report, CAD output. The full picture. You can toggle between truss and rafter systems, switch between CAD and Revit outputs, review the calculation sheet — everything except uploading your own drawings and exporting stamped files.
We shifted to results-based pricing. When you’re ready to run a real project, you pay for the project — not for access to the software. Credits are simple: $1 = 1 credit. A single-family home starts at 50 credits. A townhouse, 100. A multi-family building, 150. The price reflects the actual complexity of the work: how many units, how many structural systems, how much calculation is involved.
Teams get annual credit packages. For structural firms running projects at volume, we offer annual plans with shared credits across the workspace — a Pro plan for smaller firms and a Team plan for larger ones. You buy a block of credits for the year and draw down against it as projects come in. Unused credits don’t roll over. The economics are designed so that if you’re seriously using Genia, the per-project cost comes down meaningfully.
Why we made this change
1. The free trial was creating the wrong friction
Structural engineering software is not like a project management tool or a CRM. You can’t just drop in a sample CSV and see value in five minutes. Our input is an architectural drawing — a DWG or Revit file, with specific conventions, naming standards, and structural intent embedded in the geometry. Getting to a real output means going through a real project.
What we kept seeing with free trials was this: engineers would sign up, hit the first step of uploading a drawing, realize they needed to find the right file, prepare it, maybe clean it up — and then drop off. Not because Genia didn’t work. Because the path to seeing it work required investment before the payoff was visible.
The sample project solves this. You don’t need to prepare anything. You can see exactly what a completed Genia project looks like, how the outputs are structured, what the calculation sheet contains, what the CAD file looks like when opened. The value is immediately legible.
If you’re interested in adopting Genia, you’ll know after twenty minutes with the sample project. If you’re not, we’ve saved both of us time.
2. Adoption requires real commitment — from both sides
This is the part I want to be honest about.
Validating AI in a licensed engineering workflow isn’t trivial. You have to run real projects, compare outputs to your own calculations, build up a sense of where the AI performs well and where it needs human judgment layered on top. That process takes weeks, sometimes months. It requires a structural engineer who genuinely wants to integrate AI into their practice, not someone who’s casually curious.
What subscriptions and free trials were attracting was a lot of exploration and very little commitment. People would poke around for a few weeks, not run a real project, and churn. That’s not useful for them, and it’s not useful for us. We can’t serve you better if you never actually use us on a real project. We can’t learn from your projects if they’re not in the system.
The new pricing model makes the first real project the conversion event. You pay 50 credits — fifty dollars — to run a complete single-family structural design. If the output is good and the workflow makes sense for you, you’ll run the next one. If it doesn’t, you’ve spent fifty dollars finding that out, which is a reasonable price for an honest evaluation.
This isn’t about making money on the first transaction. It’s about making sure the people who show up are here because they want to use the product, not just look at it.
3. AI is introducing a new business model — and most people haven’t named it yet
Here’s the bigger point.
Traditional SaaS sold access to tools. You paid a monthly fee and got a login. What you produced with the tool was entirely up to you. The software company had no stake in your outcome.
AI is changing this relationship fundamentally. When AI generates a structural design — not just surfaces a template but actually runs the calculations, explores the layout options, validates against the building code, and produces a sealed drawing — the output is the product. The software isn’t a tool you use to produce the output. The software is the mechanism by which the output gets produced.
This is what I’d call results-as-a-service. You’re not paying for access to a structural design platform. You’re paying for a structural design.
It’s closer to how an engineering firm charges than how a software company charges. A structural engineer doesn’t invoice you monthly for access to their brain. They invoice you per project, and the price reflects the complexity of the project. A single-family home costs less than a multi-family building because a multi-family building takes more analysis, more calculation, more engineering judgment.
Genia’s pricing now works the same way. You pay per project. The price reflects the complexity. The output is what you’re buying.
I think this is the right model for AI broadly. When AI is actually delivering results — not just helping you work faster but producing the deliverable itself — it should be priced as a service, not as a subscription. The recurring subscription model made sense when the software was a tool and the human was doing the work. It makes less sense when the AI is doing the work and the human is reviewing and approving.
The engineering profession already has a word for this: you pay for the stamp. The stamp certifies the work. At Genia, the AI does the engineering work and the licensed SE provides the stamp. The pricing should reflect that chain.
What this means for our vision
We’ve said from the beginning that our vision for Genia is to become the most considerate EIT on your remote team. An EIT — an engineer-in-training — who never needs sleep, who can run a hundred layout options overnight, who has building code memorized across every jurisdiction, and who gets better at every project they touch.
But an EIT is not a SaaS subscription. You don’t pay an EIT a monthly access fee. You give them work, they do it, you review it, you develop trust, and over time they take on more of the workflow with less oversight. The relationship deepens based on what they deliver.
That’s the model we’re building toward. Not a platform you pay to access. A team member you pay for results.
The sample project is how you meet them. The per-project pricing is how the relationship starts. The annual credit plans are for teams that have already decided: this is how we work now.
For current users
If you’re already using Genia, nothing about the quality of what we deliver has changed. If you’re on an existing plan, reach out to us directly — we’ll make the transition clean.
If you’ve been exploring Genia but haven’t run a real project yet, the sample project is the best place to start. Take twenty minutes, go through the complete workflow, and see exactly what you’d be getting.
And if you’re a structural engineering firm thinking seriously about integrating AI into your practice — not just experimenting, but actually changing how you work — that’s who we built this for.
Start with the sample project → genia.design
— Zhihao CEO & Co-founder, Genia
Genia is a Structural AI Agent used by 200+ structural engineering firms. We generate physics-validated structural designs from architectural drawings, with permit-ready CAD outputs and full calculation sheets.